Eugene Low – Retired general Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is expected to clinch Indonesia's top job in September, but he faces a widening rift between the country's public and its top leaders, an Australian academic said yesterday.

Voters are also growing more disillusioned with the current crop of politicians, who have failed to address social and economic problems in concrete ways, said Mr Maxwell Lane, a research fellow at Murdoch University's Asia Research Centre.

He expects at least 40 million Indonesians – close to a quarter of total voters – to boycott September's run-off election, up from the 25 million who did not cast their ballots earlier this month.

Speaking in Singapore at a seminar organised by the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies, Mr Lane said first round presidential poll results pointed to a "deepening alienation between the people and the political elite".

"None of the five candidates received a significant number of votes. Mr Bambang is likely to win the first round with 31 to 32 per cent, which means he was rejected by close to 70 per cent of the population," he said.

Pre-election opinion polls had underestimated the number of boycotts, he noted. "Anecdotal evidence indicates that many respondents initially said they would not vote for any candidate. It was only after some cajoling from pollsters that they finally came up with a name."

This also explained the somewhat lacklustre campaigning, where rallies attracted smaller crowds than before, said Mr Lane. "People were more enthusiastic about the chance to vote than about the candidates. Few were convinced that the candidate they were voting for could deliver significant changes," he said.

But he reckoned that Mr Bambang enjoys enough popularity to win the presidency. "Although he is part of the old political elite, he has been able to distance himself from the past regime," he said.

However, politics in Indonesia is now less of a beauty contest. Still reeling from the effects of the Asian financial crisis in 1997, voters demand solutions to problems such as high unemployment, poor health care and education, poverty and endemic corruption. Mr Bambang needs to come up with concrete plans to deal with these issues if he wants to add significantly to his support, he said.

But could a coalition between incumbent Megawati Sukarnoputri's PDI-P and either Golkar or the Nation Awakening Party (PKB) of former president Abdurrahman Wahid tilt the balance of power in her favour? Mr Lane does not think so.

"The results of the election show that people are not voting according to party lines." In fact, the assumption that money politics and a strong party machinery are enough to deliver the votes no longer holds, he said. Voters are discontented, and they do not think well-established parties such as PDI-P and Golkar have done enough to improve their lot.

He expects a shake-up of Indonesia's political landscape over the next five years. "There will be a reorganisation of political life. Old parties could splinter and go into chaos. The public will look to a new generation of leaders to show the way forward," he said. "This is just the calm before the storm."